Similar monsters, it was believed, appeared from time to time in the marshes of Chaldaea, and gave proof of their existence to the inhabitants of neighbouring villages by such ravages as real lions and tigers commit in India or the Sahara.  It was the duty of chiefs on the border lands of the Euphrates, as on the banks of the Nile, as among all peoples still sunk in semi-barbarism, to go forth to the attack of these beasts single-handed, and to sacrifice themselves one after the other, until one of them more fortunate or stronger than the rest should triumph over these mischievous brutes.  The kings of Babylon and Nineveh in later times converted into a pleasure that which had been an official duty of their early predecessors:  Gilgames had not yet arrived at that stage, and the seriousness, not to speak of the fear, with which he entered on the fight with such beasts, is an evidence of the early date of the portions of his history which are concerned with his hunting exploits.  The scenes are represented on the seals of princes who reigned prior to the year 3000 B.C., and the work of the ancient engraver harmonizes so perfectly with the description of the comparatively modern scribe that it seems like an anticipated illustration of the latter; the engravings represent so persistently and with so little variation the images of the monsters, and those of Gilgames and his faithful Eabani, that the corresponding episodes in the poem must have already existed as we know them, if not in form, at least in their main drift.  Other portions of the poem are more recent, and it would seem that the expedition against Khumbaba contains allusions to the Elamite* invasions from which Chaldaea had suffered so much towards the XXth century before our era.  The traditions which we possess of the times following the Deluge, embody, like the adventures of Gilganes, very ancient elements, which the scribes or narrators wove together in a more or less skilful manner around the name of some king or divinity.

* Smith thought he could restore from the poem a part of Chaldaean history:  he supposed Izdubar-Nimrod to have been, about 2250, the liberator of Babylon, oppressed by Elam, and the date of the foundation of a great Babylonian empire to have coincided with his victory over the Elamites.  The annals of Assurbanipal show us, in fact, that an Elamite king, Kudurnankhundi, had pillaged Uruk about 2280 B.C., and had transported to Susa a statue of the goddess Ishtar.

[Illustration:  082.jpg GILGAMES STRUGGLES WITH A LION]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio in the
     British Museum.  The original measures about 1 2/5 inch in
     height.